A guide to simplifying data centre management

Nowadays a data centre is a complex and sometimes daunting environment to manage. Efficient data centre management enables you to plan updates and schedule changes in line with your data centres’ build out. Expansions, data centre updates and server consolidation projects are more popular than ever, but can uncover many challenges.

This guide has been designed to improve your knowledge around data centre management, so you can stay compliant, hit green IT initiatives and targets, lower costs, and increase scalability, in addition to keeping the lights on. Let this data centre managers’ guide be your one-stop resource centre for information and advice on data centre management.

Table of contents:

Data centre management strategy

Data centre management refers to computer and server operations, data security, data quality control and data entry. Data centre management also includes the management of services and applications that are utilised for data processing. A number of tools and IT policies are needed to firstly create and secondly to maintain a secure and efficient data centre.

How unified storage systems can cut data centre and data management costs
This tip explains how unified storage systems combine support for Fibre Channel, iSCSI, NFS and CIFS protocols in the same hardware to cut down cost and data centre management overheads for UK users.

Server technology and data centre management hot trends right now
Ever-changing server technology and trends are always challenging administrators looking to keep up with the best data centre management practices.

Training courses for IT security data centre management
If you’re looking to become a CISO or upper-level security manager training in certain security management disciplines, such as risk management and business continuity planning, could help you get your foot in the door.

Want to learn about UK data management and business intelligence? Find conferences and seminars
Improve your data centre management. Plan your training schedule with this list of UK data management and business intelligence conferences and seminars for 2011 and 2012.

Data recovery centres

Data recovery refers to the restoration of data from disks, tapes, CDs and digital memory cards, which may have been accidentally damaged, power surges, malfunctions or damaged by natural disasters. Part of your data centre management strategy, data recovery also includes disaster recovery planning.

SaaS disaster recovery to the rescue for Royal College of Nursing after hardware at on-premise contact centre fails
The Royal College of Nursing boosted its data centre management by implementing SaaS disaster recovery, after its on-premise contact centre hardware failed. Found out what they did and how they managed to overcome several challenges.

Disaster recovery and contingency planning security considerations
In a disaster all focus is, naturally, on getting critical business processes back up and running. Whether the disaster is natural or manmade, it's all about recovering business operations as fast as possible and getting employees back to work. You will be grateful that you remembered to work disaster recover into to your data centre management plan, when a disaster strikes.

Disaster recovery plan: Bringing your users back online
A WAN disaster recovery plan is a vital component of an organisation's overall disaster recovery plan, and data centres management, but is sometimes an overlooked one. This tip discusses bringing remote users back online, along with the company’s data centres.

Make sure your business survives a disaster – learn how to write and build a disaster recovery plan
Looking to improve your data centre management techniques? Use this guide on developing a disaster recovery strategy and writing a disaster recovery plan, as a way of improving your company’s chances of surviving a disaster.

How to select IT disaster recovery services: Top tips
IT disaster recovery services can provide technical expertise if and when your organisation needs to utilise its own DR process. Here are some tips on what to look out for when choosing IT disaster recovery services.

Virtualisation management

Virtualisation management refers to the tools used in managing a virtual environment. Once an environment has been virtualised data centre management is very important. Processes such as provisioning, patching, troubleshooting and monitoring can become challenging, despite virtualisation offering many overall benefits.

Virtualisation management: Beginners guide to virtual data centre management
All you need to know about virtualisation management, including news and expert advice. Virtual data centre management tips are available here, including the latest on VMware, advice on licensing and capacity planning.

Managing virtualisation: How server virtualisation affects the network
Virtualisation has become a vital part of many IT systems; as a result, it affects all aspects of the network. IT managers need to understand the various ways in which server virtualisation affects the network, especially I/O bottlenecks. Better data centre management can enhance your data centre’s network. Find out how.

A storage virtualisation directory for IT professionals
If you’re working on expanding your data centre management skills, check out these storage virtualisation training courses. Courses include virtualisation instruction for storage professionals, with topics in beginner and advanced VMware virtualisation training.

How the Co-operative Group used desktop virtualisation to cut costs
The Co-op used AppSense's Environment Manager and Application Manager as part of its
Citrix XenApp environment in a bid to standardise some of it data centre management tools. The data centre management tool helped look after applications to meet governance and compliance issues on licensing. Read about the Co-op’s project.

Open source in local government: Red Hat virtualisation implementation for Finnish city
Running multiple workloads on virtual servers has increased hardware utilisation from 10% to as much as 80% for the City of Kankaanpää, in Finland. In addition, the life span of existing desktop PCs has been extended. Due to this improvement in data centre management, desktop PCs can now serve as re-purposed thin clients, hosting virtual desktops run in the data centre, which therefore require less capacity from physical clients.

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